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Marjorie Lowe
Marjorie Phillips Lowe (d. 28 Oct 1961) was a prostitute, the mother of LAPD detective Harry Bosch and the grandmother of Madeline Bosch. She gave birth to Hieronymus Bosch in 1950 after having had sex with Los Angeles attorney J. Michael Haller. State authorities took her son in July of 1960, and she continued to petition for custody, with Haller filing all of the paperwork. Between 1948 and 1961, she was arrested six times for loitering (twice in 1955, once in 1956, once in 1959, and twice in 1960), and was represented each time by Haller. Her arrest reports were filed as #55-002, #55-913, #56-111, #59-056, #60-815, #60-1121. One of her friends at this time was another prostitute named Meredith Roman. They both lived in the El Rio Apartments. On occasion Roman would babysit Lowe's son while Lowe entertained a client. Both women had aspirations of getting out of the life of prostitution, and both appear to have been attracted to lawyers. On 17 March 1961, she attended the Hollywood Masonic Lodge's St. Patrick's Day Dance with Arno Conklin, Johnny Fox, and Meredith Roman, and the four of them were photographed by Boris Lugavere. Conklin fell for Lowe immediately. On the night of 27 October 1961, Lowe returned to the apartment and informed Roman that Conklin had proposed to her, and that the two were driving to Las Vegas to get married the next day. Roman flew into a jealous rage and fought with Lowe, striking her in the head hard enough to kill her with blunt-force trauma. Lowe was found in an alley off of Hollywood Boulevard, behind Startime Gifts & Gags, on 28 October 1961, apparently strangled with her own belt, though an autopsy revealed that cause-of-death had been blunt-force trauma to the back of the head. Her body was found by Patrolman Irvin Irving, and her murder was assigned case #61-743 and investigated by detectives Jack McKittrick and Claude Eno. McKittrick notified Lowe's next-of-kin, her 11-year-old son, at 3:00pm that same afternoon at MacLaren Youth Hall. A due-diligence report was filed on the status of Lowe's murder investigation on 3 November 1962, indicating that the case was at that time deemed "hopeless." In 1989, the case-file on her murder was checked out of the LAPD storage facility by her son, by then a detective with the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division. In November of 1993, her murder was exploited by civil rights attorney Honey Chandler (who incorrectly cited Lowe's date-of-death as Halloween night) in a wrongful death lawsuit against Bosch to claim that the detective shot and killed Norman Church in misguided retaliation for his mother's unsolved killing. In April of 1994, Bosch again checked out the case-file from storage, and began retracing the investigation. He was then able to determine that Roman was the killer of his mother. Notes * Lowe's name was spelled "Margerie Philips" in The Black Echo, but was spelled "Marjorie Phillips" in The Concrete Blonde and The Last Coyote. * The date of Lowe's murder was given as October 31st by Honey Chandler in Concrete Blonde (p. 121), but was listed as October 28th in the case-file in Last Coyote (p. 29). On the Death Investigation Report in Lowe's file, Harry is listed as next-of-kin, and was notified of his mother's death at 3:00pm on October 28th, indicating that 10/28/61 is more likely Lowe's correct date-of-death. * Her murder book included an arrest report for "loitering" on 16 September 1978, numbered 78-77182. She was listed as 32 years old at the time, indicating that she was born in 1946. However, she was clearly lying about her age because Harry was born in 1950. She was most likely born in 1934 or earlier. Portrayal Lowe was played by Katherine Leonard in the 2015 streaming series Bosch. In the series, Lowe was murdered on 28 October 1979, and her murder was assigned case #79-10458 (as shown in "Everybody Counts"); her evidence inventory list was filed on 6 November 1979. Appearances * The Black Echo (mentioned; unnamed) * The Black Ice (mentioned) * The Concrete Blonde (mentioned) * The Last Coyote (mentioned) * A Darkness More Than Night (mentioned; unnamed) * The Narrows (mentioned; unnamed) * Echo Park (mentioned; unnamed) * Bosch: "`Tis the Season" (mentioned; unnamed) * Bosch: "Donkey's Years" (mentioned; unnamed) * Bosch: "High Low" (flashback) * Bosch: "The Magic Castle" (flashback) * Bosch: "Us and Them" (mentioned) * Bosch: "The Thing About Secrets" (mentioned) * Bosch: "Follow the Money" (mentioned) * Bosch: "Queen of Martyrs" (photograph; flashback) Lowe, Margerie Lowe, Margerie Lowe, Margerie Lowe, Margerie Lowe, Margerie